-
The hidden cost of our growing taste for meat | Environment | The Observer
As the west’s appetite for meat increases, so too does the demand for soya – used as animal feed by farmers. But the planting of huge tracts of land is causing deforestation and destroying eco-systems in developing countries.
-
Ever since last week’s announcement of a deal to roll out Project Better Place’s model for recharging electric cars in Hawaii, I’ve been curious about how it would work out, if the supplies of new renewable electricity needed to wean the Islands’ million or so cars and light trucks off of oil were not forthcoming, or at least didn’t materialize as quickly as the company and state hope. If I’ve done my sums right this morning, it appears that electrifying Hawaii’s passenger cars would still save large quantities of oil and reduce greenhouse gas emissions significantly, even if every kilowatt-hour (kWh) to run them was generated from the state’s oil-fired power plants.
-
America’s Addiction Fuels Desire For Coffee Ground Biodiesel : Gas 2.0
Researchers are reporting they have successfully made a high quality biodiesel from spent coffee grounds. They estimate that the coffee ground biodiesel industry could generate as much as $8,000,000 in profits annually using waste from US Starbucks stores alone.
-
Arctic will have first ice-free summer in 2015: Researcher
The ice that has covered the Arctic basin for a million years will be gone in little more than six years because of global warming, a University of Manitoba geoscientist said.
-
Climate change: Sci-fi solutions no longer in the margins
With political efforts to tackle global warming advancing slower than a Greenland glacier, schemes for saving Earth’s climate system that once were dismissed as crazy or dangerous are gaining in status.
Negotiating a multilateral treaty on curbing greenhouse gases is being so outstripped by the scale of the problem that those promoting a deus ex-machina — a technical fix that would at least gain time — are getting a serious hearing.To the outsider, these ideas to manipulate the climate may look as if they are inspired by science fiction.
-
Research on nuclear fusion continues apace…
MIT researchers are keeping hope alive in the long quest for fusion energy. Researchers have advanced our ability to harnesses one of the most complicated forms of energy science in the universe, but add a word of caution that real scalable reactors could still be ‘decades away’ as all eyes now focus on the ITER in France.
-
Defense Tech Briefs – Silicon Nanowires for Anodes of Rechargeable Li Power Cells
Battery technologies are improving every day!
Charge capacities could be increased substantially over those of carbon-based anodes.
Silicon nanowires have been investigated as alternatives to the graphite heretofore widely used as an anode material in rechargeable lithium-ion power cells. The theoretical specific charge capacity of graphite, corresponding to the maximum Li content (at a composition of LiC6) is 372 mA•hr/g. In contrast, the theoretical specific charge capacity of Si corresponding to the maximum Li content (at a composition of Li4.4Si) is much greater — 4.2 A•hr/g.
-
IEEE Spectrum: The Price Is Wrong for Oil Shale and Tar Sand Tech
Looks like oil isn’t going to go away any time soon without a fight!
The huge run-up in oil prices over the last several years, reaching a peak of close to US $150 per barrel this past summer, has given energy companies a big incentive to find new ways of harvesting unconventional oil, especially in North America.
